Damrak Amsterdam Gin

Damrak was Amsterdam's first harbor — the inner port where Dutch East India Company ships unloaded spices from Indonesia, Ceylon, and the Spice Islands from the 1600s on, the same spices that filled gin's botanical bill for centuries. Lucas Bols, the oldest distilling brand in the world, has made genever near that port since 1575, and in 2004 it named its gin for the place. Damrak is a gin, not a genever, but it comes in a glass bottle modeled on Bols's traditional stoneware crocks with a china swing-top. It's built from seventeen botanicals in their natural state — never extracts — including honeysuckle, dried fruit, and a heavy hand of citrus, distilled five times in a copper pot still near Damrak Square, with a trace of malt for the smooth finish, bottled at 41.8% ABV. The Gin Is In found a creamy, citrus-forward nose of sweet orange rind, candied lime peel, dried fig, and a touch of pine, with a sweet spiciness like Italian Christmas cookies — rum, cinnamon, raisins — and called it a good gin from a distillery known for good gins: recommended. Difford's found orange sherbet and spicy zest on the nose, then orange dominating over piney juniper, angelica, black pepper, and cinnamon, noting that zesty orange challenges juniper for dominance but does so in a classically gin way. Readers call it a definite upgrade from New Amsterdam, and a 9:1 Martini gin. Orange-bright, smooth, and Dutch to the core.

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